It sold like hotcakes for Rs 10,000. The good news is, today, you can get decent handsets with loads of features for just about Rs 6,000. Here's a closer look at some of the things you can expect from these phones.

Ring tones: No more tinny piano notes, these days you can have the latest songs, dialogues from a blockbuster film, or even your voice as a ring tone. Most phones support polyphonic tones and even tones in MP3 format.

FM: Yes, you can listen to your favourite FM band while on the move, that too without carrying an extra device.

Colour screen: More the colours, more the fun. These days, most phones give you at least 65000 colours to enjoy the pictures taken from your mobile camera.

Memory: One of the most important features for your phone. For those under Rs 6000, you only get inbuilt memory, with no provision to install a memory card. Most of these phones have less than 15 MB of storage space.

Connectivity: We now have a number of technologies to transfer data between devices -- GPRS, Infrared, Bluetooth, USB Connectivity, WAP, etc. While GPRS and WAP are used for Internet connectivity through mobile devices, the others are used to transfer data between two mobile devices.

Camera: Not all handsets in this price range have an inbuilt camera, but handsets that do include VGA cameras with a resolution of 640x480. For those familiar with the term Mega Pixel (MP), these are cameras of around 0.3 Mega Pixel resolution.

How to calculate: (640*480)/1000000 = 0.307 MP, while the 1.3 MP has a resolution of 1280x1024. So, (1280*1024)/1000000 = 1.3 MP.

Now, a look at some of the most sought after phones in this category.

Text: Ankur Jain
Image design: Uday Kuckian